Guilt Reflex
by MonsterBrat
Summary: Shinji takes a look at Eva 01 and wonders who actually controls it. In the end, the experience doesn't really help.


**Guilt Reflex**

He stares at Eva Unit 01 for a while, standing alone in the hanger after another day of synch rates and preparations and training. He's the only one that does it, Rei being in the hospital and Asuka nowhere at all, but still, the days go on as usual. Even though he keeps telling Misato that the entry plug smells of blood, she says quite logically that it always has, ever since he first got in there, and why should it start to matter now?

Sometimes, he looks up and watches his father watch him through three inches of safety glass and nods, complacently.

There's no one behind the glass now, everyone's gone home. He told Misato he wanted to go to the park and she's home now. Probably crying.

Eva's eyes aren't lit. Shinji hears it over and over again, the count down to death, where everything stops and he is slowly destroyed by someone or other. It'd be an Angel or just about anyone. If Asuka woke up, she could put him in there and cut the umbilical cord and then watch him panic for five minutes.

_Five_.

Shinji tries to get away back to a secondary power cable which is in one of the buildings. He doesn't know which.

_Four_.

Shinji fights back, is defeated, needs more time. He panics.

_Three_.

Shinji screams and runs.

_Two_.

Shinji's life support won't last like this if he keeps expending energy. He's going to die.

_One_.

Shinji gives up.

And then the Eva does something, like a switch is turned on somewhere in its body, and energy floods back, rests lightly in Shinji's hands. It's part of his consciousness, the need to survive. The thought: _I don't want to die. I want more. Give me more. Give give give give give!_

He has it. The Eva moves, continues to move. Defeats everyone, destroys everyone, so Shinji feels safe.

He used to be frightened of it. Now he just doesn't care.

It's the same energy that saved him that first day here, powering the hand that rose out of the LCL and covered him. It seems like that was years ago, back when everything was simpler, easier. He doesn't understand why he was so scared back then.

Since that time, he's really learned about being frightened.

That same hand is rising now, too. It's stretching towards him like an embrace, something that should be safe and warm but isn't. Instead, it's cold and wet and _strong, _like a piece of a mountain (only Shinji knows how easy it is to rip mountains and lakes and buildings apart. He doesn't know _what's _strong anymore).

The hand is hovering over him, and he doesn't know what it's going to do to him, but he thinks it must be something terrible. He knows it, somehow. That hand wants him to die. It scares him.

Long, metal-shrouded fingers wrap around him, Shinji frozen in place and not knowing if he really wants to move, anyway. The metal squeezes around him, lifting him of the ground and he stares at dead eyes, living eyes, with nothing behind them.

_Who's directing it?_

_Does Eva hate me?_

The hand dwarfs him. His shoulders are barely left out of the fist, and his feet dangle helplessly. He feels so small, like a doll or something. He must look it, too. Something breakable and fragile.

Does Eva know that?

Something sick makes him remember. Such a small, fragile human in his hand, Eva's hand. A head that was no bigger than a thumb. Human. Not human, but Shinji can't think that. No one can tell him not to think that. No one knows.

Eva knows, he thinks. But it can't talk. All it can do is squeeze.

So it does. Shinji feels the fist start to tighten, and tighten, until it begins to crack his ribs and he is truly, truly scared. He thinks, "This is what it feels like to be crushed by a giant robot." And he feels something give way inside him and the tears that come down his cheeks. He couldn't stop himself if he tried. He wonders if Eva hates him, again. If not, then who? His father, behind the scenes perhaps? Who?

When it begins to hurt more than be uncomfortable, he starts to panic. He wants to be let go. He's afraid. Shinji starts to thrash and wonders what he was thinking, not running away, and what the hell is going on, and the idea, _I don't want to die _is there. It repeats in his mind until it drowns out all others.

A few more seconds of tight fist, and the hand lets go. Shinji falls the two meters to the catwalk and lies where he landed, staring in terror, not believing he is safe. He gets up and backs away from Eva, even though it is just a hunk of metal and LCL and god knows what else again, not something alive.

He can see the bruises on his arms. His ribs protest when he moves too much. Everything is turning a sick yellow that will, according to experience, turn black soon enough. He is still crying, even though is he safe. He wonders, vaguely, who wanted him to die. Did Eva stop on its own somehow, or was it him, or someone else that saved him?

He wonders if you still bruise after your head has popped off. Does the blood still make your skin all black, or does it stop in its little broken veins and capillaries, stay nice and still even though everything under your skin is broken, or what? It's a sick, sick thought. Shinji tells himself he is disgusting, asking something like that.

He wonders if someone fished the body out of that pool in Central Dogma. He wonders a lot of things he shouldn't. Then he thinks, _most of it turned to mush anyway, right?_ There was a lot of blood. What does that feel like, to be squeezed and squeezed. Is it like what Eva was doing? Did Eva decide to punish him, even though everyone else was so proud?

_Does Eva hate me? Can it hate me?_ Somehow Shinji thinks it can't. Or it doesn't. He remembers being stuck inside and feeling that strange sense of belonging, the idea _you are home now._ Did it want to kill him, because he didn't stay? Or something else?

_Who was controlling it?_

He walks away as fast as he can, without running. He heads for home and then realizes Misato would be there, and heads towards the surface city, or what's left of it, instead. On the escalator, Shinji decides he doesn't want to know any more answers. He's sick enough as it is.

END


End file.
